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I have three meters - Why is my Monthly statement wrong again?

TomThumb
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Hello all.

Ionly joined OVO in March, so I’ve only had 4 monthly statements so far & every 1 of them have been wrong.

As a new customer I’ve been keeping an eye on my account, just to make sure my direct debit payment covers my actual usage costs.

I’m guessing I have a different setup to most, as in the fact that we have 2 gas meters & 1 electric. only 1 gas, 1 elec are smart meters.

The normal view on the illustrative statement is correct up until my monthly statement has been produced, so the billing on all 3 meters is in sync. Albeit as long as a manually supply my dumb meter reading.

But my actual bill so far every month has only incorporated any 1 of the meters, or 2 of the meters or even once after a phone call to OVO to let them know, it had been amended to show a combination of 2 different meters.

Every month I place a call to OVO to let them know my monthly statement is wrong again & eventually OVO produces a correct statement.

I’m almost certain it’s the 3 meters & not the usual 2 that are the problem.

I did have the smart meters turn dumb for 6 weeks in May- June with the IHD also showing no data, a power cut during the night restored the service, I lost the daily smart meter readings for a week the end of June so yet another phone call to OVO, but OVO we’re still receiving readings, my OVO account is now showing smart meter readings OK but is not showing any usage data for July.

I've had more conversations with OVO in 3 months than I’ve had with any energy supplier over the last 10 yrs.

How hard can it be to get my actual monthly statement correct.

 

Tom...

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Best answer by TomThumb 15 December 2020, 16:20

Another update. Hopefully drawing to a close. @Tim_OVO  & @Transparent 

I wouldn’t want you to miss this post!

 

 Having given ovo 9 months to resolve my billing issues to no avail, I changed  my approach this month & I decided to raise an official complaint on this matter.

 

This resulted with an informative chat with the technical department & fingers crossed a full resolution.

 

 Previously I had requested that my traditional gas meter be moved to a separate new account, leaving my 2 smart meters in place, but after the customer service agent consulted with management, the answer came back as a NO.

 

This time however, ovo have agreed to this & a new account has been setup for the sole use of my dumb gas meter.

From a customer point of view, it’s the best possible outcome.

If all goes well?

 

I will gain accurate monthly bill’s,

 

I will see usage history across all 3 meters, 

 

It will make my energy usage / costs / bill’s & statements a hell of a lot easier to manage,

 

Im guessing my traditional gas meter will still have a conflict with it’s projected Vs actual kWh’s usage & costs, given the fact this meter is heavily used during the summer & has zero usage over the winter months,  I will be in a better position to identify any mismatch as this meter is no longer grouped with the remaining 2 smart meters. I’m also hoping that ovo’s backend system will see this as a trend & adjust it’s estimates accordingly for this supply?

 

I won’t have to call ovo every month to complain about my account & bills,

 

The only drawback is I’ll have to click to switch between accounts on a drop down tab 😳👍

(I can cope, bring it on)

 


What I did ascertain from the call with the technical department, 

The only error found on my account was a validation error for my traditional gas meter for this month?

The old billing system can’t cope with 3 meters!

The new billing platform can’t cope with 3 meters ? (I never got to test it!)

Ovo had no clue of what was broken, so didn’t know what to fix?

Ovo should have listened to my suggestion of 2 account months ago! (wishful thinking)

 

Hopefully after next months bill / statement, if all goes well, I can post an update & finally mark this as case closed? 


Tom...

 

 


 

 

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3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter

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Amy_OVO
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This sounds really annoying, @TomThumb, if you’ve been in touch with us multiple times we should be getting things right by now. Here’s some handy info that covers most statement queries. 

Please reach out to our team, they’ll be able to get this escalated to our operations team and hopefully get this sorted. 

We’re on Facebook, Twitter and our Help centre has online chat!

I tweaked the title of your question and added some tags, just to help other members locate this if they have a similar issue. 

:relaxed:

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TomThumb
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Cheers @Amy_OVO 

 I’ve sent the team an email, I’ve no doubt my July monthly statement will be manually re adjusted & corrected.

But my guess, I’ll be back about this time in August lol,

 

Tom...

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Ed_OVO
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We’ll keep our fingers crossed that you don’t need to, @TomThumb. Please update us here if you do though, we’d like to see how you get on with this.

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Transparent
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Thanks for posting here on the Forum, @TomThumb. Well, you’ve had an eventful introduction to OVO.

You’ve probably realised by now that you’ve started your contract during the time that OVO have been introducing a new Billing System.

Whilst most of the outstanding “issues” are related to the migration of old customer accounts, there will no doubt be some software anomalies which affect new customers such as yourself.

As you have already noticed, there is no direct correlation between the data which you see on your IHD, and that which is received by OVO for display on your My OVO pages and incorporation into your monthly Statement.

Since you have two gas meters, only one of which is Smart, how are these readings being shown online (or on your App)? Can you post a screenshot here for us to view?

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TomThumb
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@Transparent  As far as I can tell, or rather when it was working prior to July,  the web & app is usage only reflects the 2 smart meters, the one & only way to track my actual usage & costs is only available via the illustrative statement on the statements & payments history tab, albeit depending on me submitting a manual meter read off the dumb meter. 
As mentioned, that route is all well up until my monthly statement, then all goes to pot until manual intervention to to produce a statement that incorporates all 3 meters.

For reference the app data shows actual usage up until the end of April, but the web shows actual usage up until the 3rd July.


Now for a bit of light reading!!!

The main reason for leaving my previous energy supplier had been the issue with my 3 meters, 
They could only get account up & running with 2 separate accounts 1 gas & elec & 1 for the 2nd gas meter.

A biannual account review to adjust direct debit against expected / past usage.

My second gas meter is seasonal usage, high demand in the summer & zero usage during the winter.

Now the fun begins.

As normal expected usage increases during winter months, they could not automatically instruct the automated system to provide a workaround to the over inflated estimated usage, so normally ended up with me placing a call twice a year & then a manual re-calculation on my payments to put everything back in order.

Now the last straw,

After being informed yet again that the direct debit on the 3rd meter has been set to increase, I placed a call in to customer services to be told sorry, they have removed the ability of cs to do a manual re-adjustment, so I then get passed on to a manager,

sorry he said, we cannot do a manual re-calculation now. He had access to my account, he agreed with my evaluation of the inappropriate estimated usage cost increase, but insisted that he had no way to override the automated system.

His sole advise was to raise an official complaint & take it to arbitration if necessary.

 Luckily it was all sorted in-house, but enough was enough.

 

The screen grab is from the app, but the web page has an extra tab on the meter readings page for the gas where I can swap between meters.

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Transparent
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Well that’s all useful information. Thanks @TomThumb.

I’m pleased to see that there has been some provision within the new Billing System to facilitate a 3rd meter. As GB migrates further along the Demand Side Response strategy laid out by the Government in 2013/14, we may see more houses with two gas meters. Three possible scenarios come to mind:

  • one meter for gas via the National Gas Grid, and the other for hydrogen (HMG’s Zero-carbon initiative)
  • the second meter fed from a community-operated bio-methane plant
  • the second meter to feed a Combined Heat & Power plant (see Helec website), supplying electricity to meet local demand during the early-evening peak

@Ed_OVO is the Moderator-of-the-Day, so let’s see if he can find out something for us:

Is there provision within a Smart Communications Hub to permit readings from two gas meters on the same site?

I realise that there’s not going to be a Home Area Network constraint because all SMETS2 Comms Hubs must be able to operate at least 5 channels for Auxiliary Load Control Switches (ALCS) in addition to the IHD.

So does the Comms Hub firmware used by OVO have provision within its code, and additional tariff-registers to permit dual gas-meter operation?

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Amy_OVO
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Leave this with me, @Transparent, I’ll do some digging! :tractor:

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Amy_OVO
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OK, @Transparent, I have an update… 

The communications hub on the electricity S2 meter will only pair to one gas meter, this is due to a restraint from Utiligroup (or 'UG' for short). UG created and manage the Bol, which is one of a few systems that can be used to manage S2 meters and UG restrictions means we can only have 1 gas per 1 elec. However there's potentially some development in process for us to look into supporting more than one.

I hope this helps! :relaxed:

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TomThumb
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For clarification, my smart meters were installed by my previous energy supplier Npower, at the time of commissioning, the engineer had to place a call to 2 different departments with a lengthy conversation before confirming that he could indeed link 2 gas meters to the comm’s hub, in my case, the distance was to far between units to establish a link, so no confirmation if  2 smart gas meters would function, especially as they were both on separate accounts.


@Amy_OVO  So even if reports of a booster / range extender became available to bridge the link, it wouldn’t be supported on the current hardware? with OVO?

As this extra gas meter is a reverse of the seasonal usage, I’m sure if it had been a smart meter, most of my past issues would not have been a problem. Would I like it to be a smart meter? definitely.

 

Why I have 2 gas meters!  previous owners of this property explained this as, 2 gas boilers are needed, but the combined maximum burn / draw / gas usage rate was over the limit of just one gas meter, so the only workable option, 2 gas meters.

Hope this info is useful.

 

Tom...

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Transparent
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There’s a couple of separate issues here @TomThumb.

Firstly, let me add a diagram to make sure that everyone else who comes across this discussion understands what we’re talking about:

 

I’ve shown the uSmart software which OVO use to communicate with our meters, and indicated the Business Orchestration Layer (BOL) which @Amy_OVO mentioned. It’s the software interface which allows OVO’s Billing System to send SMETS commands to our meters and receive data by return.

For readers in the Northern Territory, your Wide Area Network (WAN) is provided by Arqiva rather than Telefonica, as shown in the above diagram.

So @Amy_OVO has identified that the constraint on the number of gas meters at a site is within the uSmart software. However, Utiligroup are continuing to develop this and announced a major new software suite in May’20.

 

The separate matter you raise is due to the distance between your Comms Hubs and the second gas meter. It used to be the case that OVO supplied ZigBee signal boosters when they installed the earlier SMETS1 meters into such locations. However, these are not part of the “approved” equipment for the SMETS2 installations as they offer a potential security risk.

Nevertheless, let’s ask @Amy_OVO to run this issue past Ben S and see what he thinks about it.

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TomThumb
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@Transparent    many thanks for you input & information, much appreciated.

As the end user, we are at the mercy of the pencil pushers & design bods.

But as the end user,  we as customers are all paying for the smart network rollout, but unfortunately,not all can reap all the benefits.

 

Tom...

 

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Transparent
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Tom wrote:

=> As the end user, we are at the mercy of the pencil pushers & design bods…

That era is fast coming an end. :slight_smile:

1: The whole point of Demand Side Response is that us consumers have the opportunity to take the initiative. Once the phase of installing Smart Meters is fulfilled, we will increasingly see other services bolted onto them.

  • variable / Time Of Use tariffs
  • increase of zero-carbon options
  • home-energy storage and grid-supply, such as V2G technology
  • control over auxiliary loads (ALCS)

2: You’re now with OVO Energy. Since the software systems are in live development with a team of in-house programmers, features can be added and field-tested. Key to this is feedback from the Forum

3: Even though @Amy_OVO has identified the constraint on having multiple gas meters is within the uSmart software, you will note that Utiligroup regards it’s clients as Partners rather than Customers. If OVO require features, then they can be factored into the development process. After all, OVO is now probably Utiligroup’s most significant Partner.

 

In the post-pandemic, post-Brexit, Climate-Change-savvy country in which we now live, we must get used to working together towards solutions.

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TomThumb
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I’ve had a response back from OVO this morning 

 

“I have investigated further in to your account and can see that your Gas statements have been produced already and seem to be correct, we are just awaiting your electricity statement. Please note, there are times when statements can come seperate however it is still classed as a dual fuel account.”

 

Can anybody give an indication of a normal timeframe for the electric statement to drop back inline.
 

Every month prior, via a phone call to let OVO know of the issue,  a manual refresh of my statements had been done as customer services on occasions noted that a previous statement had got stuck & it would not process / progress.

As the expected, my illustrative statement has gone to pot again, but I’m going to let it ride & see how it all plays out.

 I’ve no doubt my electric bill will catch up eventually, but I’m guessing that all depends on next months statement & if the electric is included in the  2 out of the 3 meters the system usually bills me on.


Tom...

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Amy_OVO
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It think you’re on our new billing platform, @TomThumb, but I could be wrong, this would mean your monthly summary is due towards the end of the month, I’d like to check this, please reach out to the team. We’re on Facebook, Twitter and our Help centre has online chat! Reach out to us and we’ll check this over with you today.

Thanks! 

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TomThumb
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@Amy_OVO I don’t do Facebook or Twitter, sorry.

I’m certain I’m on the new billing system.

On the web version of my OVO, I have no usage history since 3rd July, the app has no usage since May, even tho my smart meter readings are shown for each day.

Billing & monthly statement date is the 11th of every month.

On the statements & payment history tab, the “download my illustrative statement” now shows a statement & current costs for 20th July as charges for:

Smart Electric  11th June - 11 July

Smart Gas 10 July - 11 July

dumb Gas  11 July - 20 July (but as the reading is estimated, the usage & cost is also wrong)

After a manual statement re-adjustment has been done, my illustrative statement would read correctly, ie the smart electric & gas readings

11 July - 20 July along with the appropriate charges.

the dumb meter reading could be submitted & an accurate statement could be shown in a illustrative form that reflects actual costs at any point on my monthly billing cycle.

In theory OVO dose indeed support 3 meters on 1 account, but in practice this dose not appear to be the case.

So at the moment, my monthly bill & statement is incorrect again.

I cannot check my actual usage, mid month usage or actual mid month costs, via the illustrative view.

With no usage data, this has implications of incorrectly forecasting projected usage consumption over the winter months, more so as 1 of my gas meters against the norm will have zero usage over the winter period.

I have no doubt that a manual intervention by OVO will bring my monthly statement back in-line. but in the time I have been with OVO, every monthly statement so far has been wrong, normally incorporating only 2 of my 3 meters, I place a phone call to OVO to let them know of the billing error, OVO do there bit & do a manual adjustment, then  my statement & my actual usage & costs via the illustrative statement are also correct, until the following month & I have the same issues again.


I will update this thread again after my next monthly statement has been produced.

 I’m going to wait & see how my next bill plays out.

 

Tom...

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Transparent
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Ah… @TomThumb the reason that @Amy_OVO was wanting you to use FB or to tweet was so that she can discuss site-specific information which you wouldn’t put on the open Forum (GDPR etc). The Moderators also handle all the social media communications, so that means Amy stays on your case rather than you getting redirected to Customer Services, which would happen if you used email.

So I suggest you link to her using the Private Message system of the Forum.

Click on her name underlined in blue above. This will open her Profile page.

Then click the Send message button. Only you and Amy will then be in that conversation.

Let me know if you get stuck.

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Ed_OVO
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@TomThumb and @Transparent - There’s one more, new way of getting in touch with us, the web chat system!

 

You can access it here, which will be that bridge for those that want to communicate digitally but have no social media accounts.

 

Thanks,

Ed

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Transparent
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And who do we end up communicating with if we use the new Web Chat system?

Is it yourselves on the Social Media Team, or is it the Customer Services staff? The detail of what @TomThumb has posted here would be difficult to pick up if you he got routed to CS.

I just had a look at the interface. It asked me for my name before I could get routed to “one of our agents”. That’s possibly not the best noun to choose on the day when HMG has just released the report on Russian interference in our cyber communications! :guardsman_tone1:

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TomThumb
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Many Thanks for the help & info, It’s much appreciated.

If more help & a direct approach is needed, I will wait until my next monthly statement has been produced before reaching out directly to the OVO contacts from this forum, 

I will however keep this thread updated with current findings or as soon as my next monthly statement becomes available & I can  confirm the actual number of meters that have been billed & there associated billing period.

 

Tom...

 

 

 

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Bradley_OVO
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Keeping this thread updated with your progress would be hugely beneficial @TomThumb 

 

All the best,

I'm not lazy, I'm just in energy saving mode!
TomThumb
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A slight update,  For information only, no action required.

From the 3rd July, my usage graph had been displaying no information, but today it is available to view again on my OVO account, including the daily readings for all of July. 
The app however still only shows  the monthly total for March & April.

Also am I correct in thinking that I cannot manually adjust my direct debit payment (I have no intention to alter payment)  until I have been with OVO for 4 months / 3 monthly statements ? I have now surpassed this mark, but it dose throw up a strange error.

NO estimated annual usage, but the adjacent box shows my estimated annual costs in ££££. & all meter readings are up-to date

The system should link usage against costs or vice versa, even if those figures are a projection.
 

Even tho I have not been billed for my electric usage for last month, I wonder if my exaggerated current balance is earning the 3% interest reward ?.

 

 



 

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
TomThumb
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An update 

 I’ve had 3 separate statements appear in my account this morning, 1 for each of my 3 meters, A statement date of 29th July, with all meters having a statement date upto 21st July.

It wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been to confirm that all was correct : 3 separate statements with different billing dates / estimated readings shown against my smart meters.(a quick check revealed actual smart reads)

If I had known a mid monthly statement was being processed, I could have supplied my dumb meter reading to bring everything up to date! 

With all statements now in sync, my next monthly statement(s) should be a lot easier to check.

I even received £0.17 credit interest reward, 

So hopefully all will still be in sync come my actual next statement date of the 11th of August.

 

Tom...

 

 

 

 

 

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Ed_OVO
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Sounds like it’ll be smooth running from now on @TomThumb, it’s a shame it wasn’t the easiest of things to understand though.

 

Keep us updated on the next bill, it’d be great to see if the next one makes a little more sense.

 

Maybe this article could help you work out what to do with your interest reward?

I'm shocking at energy puns...
TomThumb
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Time for 1 of the OVO team to have a closer look at my account & billing, my statement last week has again only billed my 2 gas meters & not the electric.

Also as of yesterday it looks like my electric smart meter had fallen off the grid again & turned dumb.

Mod of the day hasn’t been updated yet, so I don’t know who is about, but I will reach out by the web chat option.


TIA   Tom.…

Edit:: @Ed_OVO is about this morning, so I have sent you a private message.

 

Tom...

3 meters: Smart Gas & Smart Elec / Traditional Gas meter
Ed_OVO
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@TomThumb - Thanks for getting in touch, I’ll take a look at this and get back to you as soon as possible. Out of interest, did you get any further on Webchat?

I'm shocking at energy puns...

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